I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to participate in National Novel Writing Month, which I have since 2009, this year. The thought was disturbing. But my muse came to the rescue. It said: locate a novel on Twitter. Make it a mystery. You figure out the rest. Well, I did. And though I waffled over my initial idea of playing it out on Twitter — should I or shouldn’t I? — and though I began by thinking the entire novel would take place on Twitter and ended by realizing it couldn’t — by the time I began writing Chantie’s story just after midnight on November 1st, I knew I would go ahead.
List of characters, revealed to date:
- @ChantieTrembel
- @BobbyFlax
- @BlossomFits
- @GideonNorth
- @MaryPointillius
- @FrancisLegerdem
- @LoganRevolutio9
So here’s the deal. [Updated 6 November 2014 with questions for me, below.]
The novel takes place on Twitter, which means the characters will be tweeting at each other, which means they need their own accounts, which means, well, hey you can watch them tweet on Twitter. The only issue is that the novel includes some prose — how much I’ll find out as I write it. That prose will, for the most part, not appear on Twitter. That could make it a little incomprehensible for readers or, I’m hoping, make it more mysterious and set up conversations about what’s happening “behind the scenes.” This idea will certainly make novel writing more challenging for me. I don’t know how Charles Dickens ever got the nerve to serialize his novels as he wrote them, but I’ve always admired him and am now following in his footsteps. Eek!
I wrote the first draft of the final chapter yesterday. That will remain locked up away from prying eyes. Today, I wrote the first chapter of my novel, tentatively titled Chantie. I’m not a big fan of my title; it’ll do though. Anyway, chapter one introduces my main character Chantie Trembel, and I opened it up on Twitter with a few critical tweets giving context:
Questions and Answers
If you have any questions, tweet me!
@ShireenJ Are the tweets in real-time?
— Ben Babcock (@tachyondecay) November 3, 2014
I was debating about the timeline. I write the novel in 30 days, so should it take place over 30 days? Sort of. Because of the writing process, some of the tweets won’t be in real time. But all the Twitter chats will be done in the time they’re supposed to happen over. Where time is a factor, I will stick as closely as possible to real time.
@ShireenJ is there a risk of being dragged into the narrative by following them? Because that’d be hilarious 😉
— Krupo (@PromisedMePie) November 6, 2014
I was thinking of having Bobby follow some of my tweeps, then I began to wonder if he did more than follow, if he interacted with them, how would that work in a published novel with issues of copyright and all? I’d ask before I did that and before I had his character follow anyone as well. But it could be fun!
All tweets by my characters are copyright protected under my name as per Twitter’s terms of service. “5. Your Rights You retain your rights to any Content you submit, post or display on or through the Services.”
